A Few of the Many Reasons Socialism Won’t/Can’t Work

It seems as if Socialism is becoming cool among the youth of the United States again. This is sad, because capitalism-based (mostly) free markets have lifted more people out of poverty than socialist nations have killed and/or starved to death, and that’s a lot of people. Moreover, if the DNC hadn’t rigged the primary for Hillary Clinton, an avowed Socialist would have won the Democrat Party nomination for POTUS. Another avowed socialist just ousted one of the top Democrats in the House of Representatives. As recently as 2013, Venezuela was praised by liberals for their socialism, and for being an economic miracle.

At the same time, I have a friend on twitter, a semi-famous speculative fiction author whom I won’t name because I don’t want to get him harassed, who fervently believes in Socialism. He argues well and fairly for it; he believes that once robots and AI usher in a post-scarcity society, socialism will become the only way to sustain humanity. So there are intelligent, forward-looking individuals who stiill fervently believe in Socialism, despite all its spectacular failures.

So with Socialsm on the rise among the nation’s youth, and the continued refusal of the Left to admit the humanitarian crises in Venezuela, Cuba, and Socialist nations of the past were due to the inherent ruinous effects of Socialism, it might be time to review some of the reasons Socialism can’t work.

After the Janus ruling by the SCOTUS recently, government unions are no longer permitted to take dues from non-Union members. And even better, paying dues to a union is opt-in, not opt-out: the default is unions don’t get your money unless they convince you to contribute. The main argument for unions to collect dues from non-members is that unions obtain all sorts of benefits for their workers that also benefit non-members. Unions are credited with the 40-hour work week, work safety rules, etc. The assertion is that non-Union members take these advantages for granted, and, absent the ability to take the dues without permission, too many workers will be free riders, taking the benefits without contributing their fair share. If this is true, if too many will not contribute their fair share without force, then how can Socialism work? After all, Socialism guarantees everyone has enoough. It isn’t explicitly stated that you will be given enough whether or not you work for it, but who decides whether you have worked enough to earn your Socialist benefits? The argument for Socialism is the compassion: everyone has enough. Now take someone who doesn’t work at all: do they still get as much as they need? If they do, other people will loook at them and say, why should *I* work? This is the free rider problem that Leftists see very clearly with union dues, but cannot seem to apply to Socialism itself.

One of the problems with Capitalism, socialist advocates claim, is the greed. In capitalism, there is incentive for people to gather capital to themselves, to exploit workers for their own material gain. The assumption is that capitalists, business owners, landlords, etc., are greedy and evil. They don’t need that much money, they just want it. For proof, they point to the wealthy who continue to work to earn money: no one needs that much wealth, so continuing to seek profit after you have enough is proof of greed and exploitation. Why not give up your multi-million-dollar CEO salary and/or owner payout to give all your workers a raise (even if it only works out to a few dollars a year for larger corporations)? It must be just a mindless quest for status: to be the richest simply to be the richest; a competition among the wealthy to see who has more, with the lowly worker paying the price. However, these people rise to the top due to ambition and ability. At the very least, if you accept they are only motivated by greed, what happens if you achieve a Socialist system? Will this greed go away? If there truly is a human need for competition to see who is best, why won’t that urge shift to the true scarce resource in Socalism, i.e., power? Socialists never explain what magic wand will suddenly change human nature so that the evil capitalists of our current system won’t use their drive and ability to gain power in a Socialist system and still exploit the less-ambitious for power and comfort.

The answer to both of these, then, is likely force.

I’ve seen it said that the Left is always just one more execution away from Utopia. The answer is that when Socialism fails, it always looks for people to scapegoat. There is always someone exploiting a rule loophole for power or comfort. There are always Hoarders. There are always Capitalist Roaders, who participate in an underground economy that inevitably develops to fill shortages and redistribute resources that Socialism’s Central Planning misallocated. There is always a free rider that can be made an example of, so others work harder.

In short, every problem that Socialists identify as a shortcoming of Capitalism-based (mostly) free market economies will still exist under Socialism. Humans don’t change. Only the ways the leaders use to reward or punish changes. And because Socialism has no way to deal with these human foibles without force or execution, Socialism will always fail.